


All That Is Gold

by cherrytart



Series: Burglarising [9]
Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Dain's beard is mighty and to be feared, Elves, Fluff and Angst, Multi, and thorin maybe getting something of a clue, bagginshield, but then things happened, dori's teashop is now a thing, dwalin's axes get their own tag cause they're awesome, dwarrows doing dwarrow things, dwobbit and dwarrow shenanagins, elves are here!, fem!Bilbo, grasper and keeper, i cannot spell egypt, i think, just go with it, like i was hoping to get further than this, mature themes and generalised angst, ori the sassy librarian, so this will probably be a three or four parter, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, thorin broods a lot, time is spent visiting a certain river in egypt, unleash the snapdragon, unlikely voices of reason, well sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-29 23:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrytart/pseuds/cherrytart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is King Under the Mahal-help-him Mountain.<br/>He was in no way prepared for this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one. A lot of this hurt to write, really. But I am as ever grateful for all the comments and support. <3

It is beyond vexing, Thorin Oakenshield cannot help but think, tossing aside the rather…blunt letter from his sister enquiring _where_ exactly her eldest son was, since he has evidently not arrived in Ered Luin with the rest of the expedition.

He is King Under the Mahal-help-him Mountain, yet finding a simple straight yes or no answer is a seemingly impossible task.

Well, the question itself is not so much the problem- rather, those he would ask it to have proved frustratingly hard to find. On perceiving the follies of his nephews, he had spoken at length with Dwalin, Balin and Dain, and some two days later had sent for Kili to explain himself.

His youngest nephew, of course, was nowhere to be seen. Dain had persisted in offering ‘help’ of some kind, and Thorin had eventually waved him off in frustration, agreeing to whatever it was his cousin was proposing.

It is not so odd nowadays for Kili to disappear- he had not been born under the earth and stone, to Thorin’s regret, and sometimes seeks the open spaces with greater alacrity than a son of the line of Durin should. And more than that, since the incident with the Arkenstone, Kili has held his uncle in somewhat less regard than previously, and did not seek out his company or approval.

It cuts Thorin deep, this estrangement from a once beloved nephew- but he’d had a mountain to rebuild, an heir to teach, people to rule…and a halfling to forget. And so the distance between him and his youngest sister-son grew and festered, and he cannot see the way back.

He has thought perhaps to send Kili back to Ered Luin as he had done a year or so ago, until Dis is ready to depart from there with the last of their returning kin, but the boy is loath to be separated from his brother once more, and what good it would do Thorin is at a loss to decipher. Only now, Fili is gone on some fool’s errand seeking what cannot be found, and Kili remains.

 _They knew._ Thorin realises grimly. _They knew I would trust Fili over Kili, that I would not question his sudden desire to depart, would give him leave to go unchaperoned when I made certain his brother was guarded._ Still, the absurd venture Fili was on is likely more than half of Kili’s conception- he who loves Billa Baggins almost as much as his uncle did. 

No.                                                  

 _Does._ Whispers some unbidden corner of his mind, the sharp bite of a fly Thorin cannot bring himself to swat.

He will not think of it, but he can remember Kili’s dark eyes burning as his brother gripped his arms to hold him back from striking Thorin. **You had no right.** Kili had snarled, worse than Frerin in one of his passions. **She was _ours_ as well, you had no right to send her away _. How could you._**

Thorin clenches his fists indignantly. Do they not know, his brave strong foolhardy nephews, the futility of their decision to go over his head? She will not be found, not where they look, he had asked for word and received none in the early days of her absence when he was still fool enough to hope, and she was nowhere to be seen.

She does not want to be found.

She does not want him to find her.

_(In his deepest thoughts, his darkest nightmares- he fears that she is dead.)_

He cannot entertain false dreams, nor allow others to do the same.

_(he fears that she lies broken in the wilderness, life stolen by his wilful fury, his denial, his rage, that he sent her to her end-)_

Is it from fear, then, he asks himself. Fear of what might be found. Or of what might not.

_(he **cannot** endure it, to think her eyes no longer peer about her with the mixed up yearning that comes from losing one’s mother too young, that her lips are parched and have lost their colour, her cheeks wasted and grey, and that it is his fault, all his fault in his damned selfish pride-)_

He is King Under the Mountain. He told her to go, and she went.

_(stumbling, she shoved Dwalin away from her, fled as one hounded from Mandos’ halls, and he turned his back to rest a hand against the cool comfort of the stone, and feigned not hear her sharp ragged breathing, **let me go** , you know nothing Thorin Oakenshield, nothing of what I do nothing nothing nothing-)_

She is gone.

_(-lost-)_

Those who seek such a treasure do not remember that, but he does. She was not taken or stolen, nor did she flee of her own will.

 _(-all soft white noise in his head, a battle, Frerin- no Kili, fallen, where was his brother, his nephews, FiliKiliFrerinThrainThror_ **King Under the Mountain** _and her, where was she, he sent her from his side he **had** to, she knew not what she did, she knew, Billa-bring her back to me he needed wanted her needs her **now** ) _

He had relinquished her. She gave herself willingly, and he had thrown her away.

That is the bitter truth of it.

He is not one for introspection, or he was not, and Thorin dislikes the thoughts that come upon him ever more frequently now.

He has done what he thought was right, what he knew to be-

_(-right. So had she. His halfling, pretty brave laughing with her golden hair in his hands and her wide red rimmed eyes, come here my love I’ll protect you, down in the dark she whispers, **shines** ) _

Thorin’s fingers scrape at his beard, longer now, but not so long that he cannot reach the line beneath his jaw she liked to seek with her soft questing mouth. His body tenses at the ghost of her touch, remembering the places she would find to set him burning.

He carries her in his very skin. None can know how close she remains, or how far apart they are sundered.

Perhaps that is his true folly, the not telling, the secret keeping, how he wants to hold onto her memory and never let go, cannot relinquish it in the absence of her person.

Is his silence, his possession, his hold over what is left of her to them, truly what has driven Fili and Kili to seek her out?

Thorin will have the truth at length from Kili, so truly it makes no matter –there is the fact of the handkerchief, though, and all that lies behind it.  

Probably a mistake, initials meant nothing, but in spite of that- he’d dispatched Dwalin to find Nori, only to be informed that the erstwhile trickster had left Erebor a week ago for who knew where. Nori could have stolen the handkerchief anywhere, from anyone, and his nephews would have easily taken it to be Billa’s.

They miss her greatly. Thorin is well aware of that, thank you very much.

Kili had not been discovered in his quarters or the market or the treasure halls. Thorin had sent men to Mirkwood to ask if the young prince had been seen there, only to have them return with Thranduil’s cocky brat of a son- who spent a few days flitting about being tall and elvish and unhelpful before Kili’s whereabouts were uncovered and he was finally persuaded to leave. 

It had been particularly galling, Thorin recalls, being interrupted in the middle of counsel by Dwalin trailing in one of Bombur’s innumerable brood of tiny dwarrows, who had blurted out that Kili had ‘gone down the deep mines with unca Bofur’ before scampering off the way it had come.

Typical. Kili is no miner, but he would have known that there was no hope of getting him out, and deep mine missions could go on for months. That was discounting the catacombs that led up and out of the mountain, which any of the deep miners could have shown Kili.

No, there had been nothing to do but wait- Bofur’s group is due up soon, and then Thorin will have to speak to Kili, if only to rebuke him for his foolishness. Dain, as good as his word, has sent dwarves after Fili who would be sure to keep an eye on Thorin’s nephew.

Fili will return anyway, or turn up in Ered Luin, even if he does manage to give Dain’s dwarves the slip. As Thorin has told himself, time and again, it is likely this will come to nothing.

For all purposes it _is_ nothing- he has put her aside, and that is nobody’s business but his own. If he spent all his time regretting the mistakes of what seems like a past life he cannot bring himself to fling away, how would he lead his people, maintain his kingdom?

Impossible. This is folly and he knows it, and he takes a moment to shake his head over the fact that his nephews, with all the knowledge of the world their quest has given them, do not know the same.

Perhaps not, but it is after all not only a matter of this ridiculous deception his nephews have undertaken but that they lied to him in order to achieve it, and that he cannot accept.

From now on, he will mend the broken fences between himself and Kili, he will strive to be an uncle again to Fili rather than simply a King, and things will be better. His sister will return and help him, Nori will turn up sooner or later like the bad penny he is (no he doesn’t quite understand the term but Billa said it a lot and these are the things that stick in one’s mind) and then perhaps Bofur will stop looking so glum all the time since it is really most unlike him.

Dwalin will continue his ridiculous yet amusing attempts to court their young librarian whilst avoiding detection from the two older sons of the line of Ri, Thranduil will agree to the trade terms Balin has set out or Mahal help him Thorin may have to kill the pointy eared bugger, Gloin’s wife (and Bombur’s for that matter) will see that there is really no need to keep on tutting at him and sending up baked goods, for he is perfectly fine, and things will, in short, be exactly as they should-

“WHAT IN MAHAL’S NAME IS THAT?”

Ah.

Among his many excellent and admirable qualities, Thorin’s cousin, neighbour and ally is possessed of a voice capable of travelling effortlessly through several layers of stone. When Dain Ironfoot shouts, whoever he is shouting at knows it and so does half the mountain and quite possibly the elvenking on his ridiculous wooden throne.

And, given that his royal chambers are just down from the guest quarters allocated to the Lord of the Iron Hills during his extended visit to Erebor, so does Thorin Oakenshield.

Sighing, Thorin pushes himself up from the table in his solar that has quite against his will become what Balin calls a ‘thinking spot’ and goes to see what is the matter.

Another shout, one of “I ASKED YOU A QUESTION, YOU _BLITHERING HALFWITS_!”, hastens Thorin’s progress down the corridor. Worry curdles briefly, though he doubts this has anything to do with either of his nephews.

He does not knock before entering the chamber, mainly because the door is already ajar. Dain is pacing up and down, mighty grey beard bristling with aggravation, in front of a small group of dwarves who look like they would do anything to be anywhere else right now.

Three striplings, the tallest with altogether too much oil in his beard, and two older warriors that Thorin recognises. Toinar is a veteran, blood of both Erebor and the Iron Hills, one of Dain’s most faithful guards. Thorin’s father always spoke well of Toinar, and though Thorin knows him by naught but reputation, it is enough.

The leader he knows better. Hanr son of Halfren is a skilled captain, strong in both battle and peacetime, proud in his honour and ruthless in his ambition. He had briefly courted Dis whilst Thorin’s people sought refuge in the Iron Hills, and though his prowess is oft spoken of, his character is given less glowing reports.

Whatever his reputation, Hanr knows rank and file as well as any dwarf should, and he is first to take the knee when Thorin enters the room. The others do the same in a slightly haphazard display, and do not rise until Dain irascibly orders them to do so.

“What news, cousin?” Thorin asks the Lord of the Iron Hills- he guesses it cannot be good, if a scouting party has returned to such a loud and  ungentle welcome.

“Oh, well, I’m not oversure, all told.” Dain is rubbing at his beard, a troubled look in his eyes. “Cept that I could not have chosen a stupider group of clotpoles to tail yer nephew if I’d done it  on purpose. I’m sorry, Thorin.”

Here, Thorin grit his teeth. Dain was a plain-spoken dwarf at the best of times, rough in his manner as he was hearty, and for him to actually _apologise_ in this way unsettled the King Under the Mountain deeply. As did the mention of Fili…

“For what?” Thorin asks, injecting an extra layer or two of depth into his voice.

“My lord!” Thorin turns around to see that Hanr has taken a knee again, a habit that Thorin is not used to, still, after all his years in exile.

“Speak then, and much good may it do ye.” Dain nods.

Hanr almost scrambles to his feet, keeping his head inclined respectfully. “My Lord Thorin, I have grievous news to tell you, and I regret to say that-”

“Does this concern my nephew? I do not see him here.” Thorin says gruffly, forcing down any unkingly residue of panic that comes from Hanr’s grave bearing and the downcast eyes of the other four dwarves.

“Nor shall you, m’lord.” Hanr says. “My company and I, we followed Prince Fili as Lord Dain commanded us in your name, and we…we found evidence of a most terrible betrayal, your highness.”

“Betrayal.” Thorin says hollowly. He cannot fathom what Hanr, he who is called _Silvertongue_ , is getting at.

“Yes. We followed him all the way west, to a house in the region of the Shire, and there we observed, if you’ll forgive me, Lord Thorin, that he was habitating with a young woman well known to yourself. A Miss Billa Baggins, if you please.”

Blood begins to roar in Thorin’s ears. It cannot be- she was gone, she had not returned to her home, she could not have done so. “What do you mean by this?” he asks, stiff and unbelieving.

“No offense, sir, none at all.” Hanr is quick to assure him. “But it seemed they were living as man and wife.”

Momentarily, it feels as though he is between the teeth of Azog’s warg, being thrown around like a dog would with a scrap of gristly meat. He is hot, then cold, and his hands twitch convulsively.

Then it passes and Thorin Oakenshield is stone, his fury settling over him hard as granite, and it must show in his eyes. He cannot fathom anything, not Hanr’s words, not the faces of the dwarves in front of him, not Dain’s presence at his side.

All he can see is wheaten yellow hair, dimpled cheeks, wet mauve lips and fast moving hands, he knows not whether the images in his head are of Fili or Billa or both of them, for he sees bodies locked together, beautiful and profane, and disbelief, warring with anger, curdles in his heart.

“What proof have you of this?” He finds himself asking, wooden.

“Oh, none, and it matters not!” Dain fair spits the words, flinging a blunt hand through the air as though to easily dismiss the claims that have stolen the breath from Thorin’s lungs.

“It matters.” Thorin says, scarcely knowing what words come forth from his lips. He closes his eyes briefly, wondering which would be better- to believe and let anger flow and ebb, or to deny such a thing entirely.

“Debur was the one what saw ‘em. Maybe he should tell it.” Suggests one of the youths, pushing forward the dwarf with the well-oiled beard.

“Indeed.” Hanr says, eager now in a way that Thorin does not like. “Tell the the King of this treachery, boy. Tell it all and tell it true.”

The dwarf is the eldest of the three striplings, and he licks his lips before beginning his story. “Well, when we saw what was what, your kingliness sir, Hanr set me to watch the halfling woman’s house, on account of how as I know- well, it don’t matter, but I _saw_ them, I did, they was always touching and those little looks, smiling and kissing- and I just knew, even if it weren’t for ‘em bedding down in the same room most of the time- and there was-”

“Alright.” Thorin stops the boy before he is tempted to throw him out of the door. “Alright. It is enough.”

“Thorin.” Dain says, and Thorin struggles to meet his cousin’s eyes. Dain is a good dwarf, rough and hard yes but the best of them often are. Still, Thorin cannot stand the almost pity he sees in Dain’s face.

“What?” he bites out.

“There’s more. More important than hearsay regarding Fili and your little burglar-”

“She is not my anything, Dain. I think that has been made abundantly clear.” Thorin’s rage is stone, yes, but it lives and breathes, a wretched ugly thing, and if he were not as old as he was or hard as he has become, he would be riding to the Shire to challenge his nephew to-

To what? To fight for a woman who no longer wants him? A woman who, though he calls her his in the privacy of his heart, though he claims her still in darkness and secret, may now love another.

Love _Fili_.

His heir. What is he to do?

“Be that as it is, Thorin, there’s something more important, ye have to see it though I doubt you’ll like it much, I-” Dain’s voice is almost pained.

“I like this little and less as it is, Dain, what is it you wish to tell me?” Thorin asks, voice rough. He feels blinkered as though in a dark tunnel.

“Erm.” says one of the boys, the youngest one by the look of things, a dark featured dwarf who knots his hands behind his back when Thorin looks at him.

“Go on, Gleli. Might be as you’re good for somethin’ after all.” Hanr prompts the lad, and Thorin is seized by the urge to lay him out with a  fist to the jaw.

“It’s just…I don’t know how but she must have sneaked out while you were talking, she’s a little terror like that…Snapdragon’s gone.”

The eruption is immediate- Hanr goes purple and starts towards Gleli only to have Toinar shove him back with a  growl, Dain makes a face like he has just sat down on a sword blade, the other two young dwarfs add their voices to Hanr and Toinar’s argument and Thorin has to shout to make himself heard.

“What-” he asks in a dangerously quiet but genuinely befuddled tone. “Is a Snapdragon?” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody in Erebor is at all prepared. For any of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, thanks for all the comments and kudos and just for reading, really. I love hearing what you all think, and well, here is chapter two of this excerpt. It's...it exists.

He is being watched. Ori is sure of it. He may not be as sharp as his brothers, what with Nori’s carefully honed criminal instincts and Dori’s sixth sense whenever anything potentially improper is occurring, but he spends quite enough time in the quiet and relative solitude of Erebor’s refurbished and cavernous library to know when things are amiss.

Sighing, he puts down his quill (the corrections to this manuscript Balin has unearthed from before the dragon came will just have to wait their turn) and gets up, hooking a candle from a nearby shelf. Dori fusses at him to bring oil lamps, saying he’ll ruin his eyes, but it’s barely evening and although the mountain is rebuilding steadily since their return, candles are cheaper and easier to come by.

He learned by candle light, late nights up reading and sketching in the room Dori rented above a milliners in Ered Luin, his brothers’ soft snores providing a soothing background to his midnight studies, dull lights flickering over cheap paper and clotting ink. Ori of Ri is a dwarf of the line of Durin, and Durin’s line has suffered one and all, but he cannot help but remember the times when his family was worse off than most.

_We do not forget._

True, though things are better for the brothers Ri now. Dori has his tea shop, Ori his library, Nori can come and go without the threat of the noose hanging over him. And there are other things, more precious things, things that bring a warm blush to Ori’s cheeks to think about….

Oh. Right. The intruder.

Well, not an intruder exactly- the library is always open, free for everyone to use, but Ori’s desk is near enough to the main door and he can’t help but think that he’d have _noticed_ if someone came in looking for books. There’s been a fair amount of ruckus around today. 

Guards though, it had seemed, down from the royal quarters. Probably looking for Kili. Ori gulped, shaking his head. Not that they’d find him.

He thinks he sees a shadow disappear down to the left of the main row, and he takes a moment to curse his own curiosity before following it. Maybe he dozed off and whoever is in the library was simply checking to see if whoever they were meeting had shown up. Ori frowns- the amount of times he’s happened upon couples getting down to it and had to shield his eyes whilst ordering them out…

(…feeling slightly hypocritical as he does so because Mahal knows he and Dwalin get enough done in here, last week in fact-)

But no, this is different. There’s a cold, unsettled feeling in his spine that he hasn’t felt since Mirkwood, and the candle keeps sputtering and it really is dark back here, perhaps he should go and get another candle, or maybe Dori really is right about the oil lamps.

The shape, whoever it is, has retreated to the corner, huddled behind a corner shelf, and Ori realises that only a dwarfling could fit into such a cramped space. Probably one of Bombur’s lot playing hide and seek since they know Ori is loath to scold them. The bookcase gives a disturbing wobble as he moves forwards. He’ll have to fish them out lest the thing topple over and bury them, and then he’ll be for it.

“S’alright, little one. I won’t tell ‘em where you’re hiding, just come on out of there and we’ll stow you somewhere safer.” he says. “C’mon…oh…”

He freezes- perhaps in shock, he thinks more in horror. Seconds seem to tick into lifetimes, because the face that turns towards him is grubby and tear streaked, and definitely not one of Bombur’s litte dwarrows.

In fact, he’s not sure the child can be called a dwarrow at all. A small, beardless child with a rounded chin looks up at him, and startling blue eyes fail to disguise the features that could only have come from one person.

 _Billa._ Ori knows the proportions of Billa Baggins’ face just as he knows the rest of the company's, he drew them on the journey, committed every flaw and facet to memory, and this little girl, with Thorin Oakenshield’s colouring and her mother’s jaw and cheekbones, the arch of Billa’s eyebrows and the almost dimple on the right side.

Ori says something that would have gotten him a clip round the ear if Dori had heard, and collapses his face into his hands. “This is bad, this is so bad, you…oh you cannot know how bad this is.” he mutters, not knowing whether he is addressing the tiny half dwarf, half hobbit (Dwobbit? If that is the correct term. Will he be credited for coming up with that? Is this at all relevant? His scholar’s mind is being frighteningly logical at this inopportune moment) child or himself.

The little girl makes a small noise, halfway between a sniff and a sob, and Ori lifts his head to look at her again, noting how her hands are clasped tightly around a worn stuffed bear of the kind Kili used to have when they were dwarflings, and the other thumb is jammed firmly into her mouth.

Her eyes are squinting in the half light and the shadows Ori’s candle throws, but that makes him surer than sure she is Thorin’s, having seen that expression on Thorin’s face- and on Lady Dis’, for that matter- more times than he can count. The look that says _really, now, today, you expect me to put up with this **today**? _

Suddenly, the guardsmen rushing about makes a whole lot more sense, and Ori is tempted to gnaw on his fingernails in a panic. They _took_ her, he realises- took Thorin’s little girl away from Billa, and now they’ve lost her like the idiots they must be, if they thought stealing Billa Baggins’ daughter, Fili and Kili’s cousin, was in any way a smart idea.

“Hello.” he finds himself saying quietly, in an attempt to make the awfully judgy look go away. Mahal, it’s uncanny how much she resembles Thorin, and Ori wonders whether he shouldn’t take her to the royal chambers, because Thorin must be going spare with worry.

Well, as much as he can- he can’t have known about her for long, can he? No one else did, not even Fili or Kili- Fili.

Fili.

But Fili _did_ know. Or does.

Fili, who hasn’t been here for months, who left suddenly for Ered Luin with barely a word. Who isn’t even back yet, because Ori would _know_.  

And Kili, who is even now hiding…

This, Ori realises abruptly, is a mess.

Not your common or garden ‘Nori got arrested again and we can’t afford to bail him out this time without selling the kitchen table’ mess, or your slightly more serious ‘have to get Dwalin out of the house without Dori realising he spent the night and locking me up in the raven tower’ mess.

A big mess. A mess of epic, royal proportions that Ori has no idea how to deal with. Subtract a quiet afternoon, add small crying child and multiply by maker knows how many guardsmen on the lookout, factor in one extremely angry king under the mountain, and Ori can already feel a headache coming on.

“What’s your name then?” he asks the child, in an effort to get her to come out from behind the bookcase so he can pick her up without it crashing on top of their heads.

“Fweya.” she lisps around her thumb, so quiet he can barely hear it. Ori frowns- that doesn’t seem like a very _hobbity_ name, but then again, their burglar isn’t an average hobbit, so what can he expect.

“I’m Ori, Freya. Nice to meet you.” he says, unsure if she’ll understand him- she’s young, and little, tiny, can’t be more than two if Billa’s pregnancy lasted as long as a regular dwarrowdam's does.

Billa. Pregnant. Now there’s a bizaare thought, and Ori’s heart clenches unpleasantly when he remembers how hard bearing is- he should know, birthing him _killed_ his mother, and a small, bitter part of him shoulders the blame for it, for orphaning both his brothers. Not much, he must have been, to lose Ma for.

And for Billa, delivering alone, in the wilderness perhaps with only Gandalf to help her or inexpert hobbit midwives- Ori shudders, and then he remembers the child in front of him and squares his shoulders.

“Is your mother here with you, sweetheart?” he asks Freya, hoping against hope that Billa has spontaneously decided to stop by and visit- though given the shouting match she and the King had the last time she was here, Ori thinks it passing unlikely.

“Mama?” Freya’s thumb slips from her mouth and she edges forwards, as though she expects Ori to be hiding her mother under his cardigan. He can see her better now- her black curls mussed and unruly, small frock dusty from days on the road and- oddly enough- fabric strips round her bare feet, which are cut and bruised.

Who, he thinks, is responsible for this? Not Fili, and certainly not Billa. He does not want to think of Thorin’s part in this, does not want to hold more blame in his heart than he already does for the somewhat noble king who led them out of exile.

And then cocked things up royally, the voice in Ori’s head that speaks with Kili’s voice reminds him. All of a sudden, though, he has an idea. He reaches forward, slowly so as not to startle her, and is able to lift the dwobbit away from the bookcase and onto his hip, like Dori used to carry him when he was barely bigger than her.

She does not surrender the bear, but one small hand digging into his woollen sleeve is enough to be going on with. Light as a feather, Ori thinks, tipping her head up so he can reassure her.

“Hows about I take you to see your cousin, Miss Freya?”

*

“What, exactly-” Dori asks, irritably spearing a crumpet on a toasting fork and handing it to his younger brother. “Made you think this was a good idea?”

“Well what else was I supposed to do?” Ori replies, gesturing towards the child who is happily sneaking fingers of lemon cake off of the plate in front of her, one hand secured in Dori’s beard as she sits on the elder Ri brother’s lap.

“Take her to Thorin, perhaps? Or to that guardsman you seem so blessed fond of?”

“He has a name.” Ori protests. “You remember? He was on a quest with us a few years back….saved our lives once or twice…fought in battle beside us. Never once looked down on any of us even though he’s collared Nori for robbing Mahal knows how many times? Really, Dori-”

“Alright, alright.” Dori tuts. “And enough of that, young lady, you’ll rot your teeth- oh, well, one more then.” He relents when Freya pouts up at him, daring him to deny her one more lemon cake. “Oh, dear me, we are in a muddle.”

“Mmm.” Ori agrees. “But they took her from her mother, Dori. She ran away and _hid_ from them. She was scared, and I couldn’t just…”

“Don’t. I understand.” Dori pats his arm, and takes a sip of bergamot tea to calm his nerves. “Well, no, I wish I did, but there you are. How on earth did this _happen_?” He seems to be asking the room at large, looking down at the child on his lap.

“Well surely you know _how_ it happened-” Ori begins, then cuts off sharpish when his brother’s eyes narrow dangerously.

“You  risked a lot bringing her here.” Dori points out in a deliberate change of subject. “You’re sure you weren’t seen, Ori?”

Ori nods. He had stuck to the back alleys, the ones Nori had shown him when they first moved in, and kept Freya hidden under his coat. She hadn’t liked that a bit, but it couldn’t be helped, and he expected she’d had to endure worse travelling conditions from the state of her feet.

Once he’d entered the house by the back door, he’d waited in the tea shop kitchen till Dori shooed the last few reluctant customers out of the door and tried very hard not to look incredibly guilty. He suspects it didn’t work too well, but you can’t win ‘em all.

“Thank Mahal for small mercies, then.” Dori grumbles. “Don’t lick your fingers, pet.” he admonishes Freya, who looks up from her pursuit of crumbs and fixes that accusing blue eyed stare on Ori.

“Where Fifi?” she asks, and Ori finds a lump rising in his throat as Dori’s hair practically recoils in shock. “You say cousin. Fifi _cousin_.” she explains helpfully to Dori, as though he doesn’t know. _She must think us frightfully odd_ , Ori realises _. If not downright scary._

“Fili?” Dori says, in what seems like hopeful disbelief, no doubt imagining goings on that do not fit into Dori’s Rule Book For Polite, Mannerly (& Sanitary) Behaviour.

Freya nods emphatically, dark curls bobbing up and down. “Cousin. Mama say so. I want…”

“Kili!” Ori calls up the stairs, unable to bear the look of impending tears on the little ones face. He knows he’s a softie, but he couldn’t bear it if she cried. _(He remembers Billa sobbing as she stumbled away from all of them, wanting to run after her but feeling too much of a coward for not saying anything, furious tears blinding in his own eyes, Dwalin’s arm around him in something like comfort, Nori holding Bofur back to keep him from leaving too, or maybe from landing Thorin a blow to the face)_

“What do you think you’re shouting about now-” Dori asked, but is put off by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. The rhythm slightly off, a symptom of the limp that the young prince of Erebor has carried since the battle on the plain below the mountain, the one Ori still has these dreadful nightmares about.

“What’s up, Ori?” Kili grins, brittle and slightly lopsided. Like everything about him for the last year or so.

Ori stands, blocking Freya from Kili’s view and wondering how to go about this without Kili going for his bow and trying to shoot his uncle or the guardsmen or possibly everything and everyone that isn’t Fili.

“One moment!” Dori gets his bearings before Ori manages to untie his tongue, peering round Ori to glare at Kili. “How long have you been up there?” he demands.

“Three days, has it been?” Kili puts his head on one side.

“About that.” Ori agrees, feeling Freya jab at his back with a foot and praying she stays quiet long enough for them to explain properly.

“Three…how?” Dori seems on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

“Well, I came up from the deep mines a bit ahead of Bofur and the others, so Ori leant me his room.” Kili grabs a chair and straddles it backwards as he says this, and Dori makes a noise like a rattlesnake coughing.

“If he’s been sleeping in your room, where exactly have you been sleeping?” Dori asks in a dry voice, fixing his younger brother with a patented ‘tell me what is going on or so help me Mahal’ look that really should not affect Ori anymore.

“Erm, well…I suppose you could say-” Ori tries to figure out how to word this with an impressionable dwobbit (dwobbitling?) in the room.

“Nevermind, I have decided that I do not want to know.” Dori announces.

“Oh, good. What’s going on then?” Kili asks, looking from Ori to Dori with a question in his eyes.

“I found this-” Ori reaches behind him and hefts Freya out of Dori’s grip. “In the library.” The little girl kicks a little, pedalling her legs against Ori’s side and barely holding onto her bear, and Kili’s mouth drops open.

“She’s Billa’s daughter, Kili. Billa and Thorin’s. I mean, obviously. Her name is Freya.” he suppliments, and Kili mouths the name, face suddenly pale, his eyes with that flicker of wildness searching the child’s face. This is not going to end at all well, Ori realises.

 _Nicely handled, little brother._ Nori would probably comment if he were here, Ori thinks as Dori sighs in exasperation and Kili gets up slowly, the better to stare in shellshocked realisation at Freya, who looks back with Thorin’s eyes and a quivering lip.

“You have got to be joking me.” Kili breathes, his brows furrowing. he reaches out as though to take the child, then draws back in a juddering motion helped not at all by the lack of balance in his legs. “How in Aule’s name….”

Freya’s lip sticks out pronouncedly. “ _Fifi_.” she says, sounding confused as she burrows into Ori’s cardigan.

“Where’s Fili?” Kili asks, the silence stirred and broken by Freya’s small whisper.

“Not here. Nor is Billa. That’s why I brought her here, because I think Thorin-”

It was the wrong thing to say and Ori knows it immediately.

“I know what he did.” Kili grits out. “He sent men out to take her, didn’t he? Snatched her away from Billa when Fee wasn’t looking, that-” Kili cuts himself off again and starts towards the back door.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Dori gets up, apparently having regained his composure. Ori lets Freya grab ahold of his collar, because the look on Kili’s face could bring an army of wargs to a standstill, and Dori does not flinch.

“Home, to see my uncle.” Kili growls, sounding a mixture of princely and feral, and Ori suspects the only ‘seeing’ involved will be that of Kili’s fists and Thorin’s face, and these things called consequences suddenly seem a whole lot heavier.

“And do what exactly, shout at him for a fortnight? You think Billa isn’t  right on her daughter’s heels? You think she’d sit waiting in the Shire after they _stole her child?_  You think your brother would? Shame on you, Durinson.” Dori stands to his full height (not much), and plants his hands flat on the table, setting in for a lecture.

Kili shakes his head like a pony troubled by flies. “I can’t just-”

“You can and you will. I am only going to say this once, my Prince- there is a proper way to do this and it does not involve Dwalin Fundinson hauling you off to the cells to cool down after you go attacking the king. We will fix this without violence.” Dori sounds completely sure of himself and Ori realises now why he and Nori clash so- not only are they as different as fire and stone, but they are both just as clever as the other. “Now sit. down.” Dori fixes his gaze on Kili.

The fight does not drain out of him, not a bit of it, but for the first time since the Battle of the Five Armies when addressed by somebody besides his brother, Kili son of Vili does as he is told. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DORI HAS A TEASHOP DO NOT QUESTION ME THIS IS CANON HOW CAN IT NOT BE. In other words I am not original at all, but it seems to be the general consensus and one that I am greatly in favour of.  
> Ori is the adorable knitted dwarf of my heart, and Dori I love just as much, even if he is a fusspot. Kili is having a bit of a personal crisis, as can be seen.  
> So now what?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is much to be done, and little time to do it in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...dialogue happened. Here, my loves. Your kudos and comments are wonderful and eternally appreciated.  
> EDIT: I could have sworn I entered this under rich text after copying it from word, but oh well. Formatted now, sorry for the mix up. :)

There is a sharp throbbing in the vicinity of Thorin Oakenshield’s temples as he surveys Dain’s hapless scouts, all five of whom are keeping their eyes firmly on their boots. A dead silence has reigned in Dain’s quarters for three excruciating minutes.

  
“So.” he announces in his most kingly tone. “Let me attempt to get this straight. Lord Dain ordered the lot of you to shadow my nephew. You did so and tracked him to the Shire, correct?”

  
There is a generalised noise of assent from the group, and Dain makes as if to say something, but Thorin holds up a hand to stop him. The tugs and shifts at war in his breast are more than enough to contend with given what he has just been told.

  
He continues his measured words. “And upon discovering my nephew's…intimacies….with Miss Baggins, be they real or imagined…” _he will not believe it, cannot believe it, the very thought lends a taste of blood to his mouth_ “You also realised that Billa bore my child after I exiled her. A girl child. My daughter.” The words are just as much an attempt to rationalise the impossible as to question it.

  
She was his one, his only, his sweet Billa with her soft face and eyes and heart, and she bore his child alone, in exile. The hooks dig at Thorin’s chest, boring deeper, and he thinks to choke on lost time and longing and bitter grey guilt. “And you took it upon yourselves to return that child to me.”

  
“Yessir.” One of the striplings (not the dark one, the skinny one who hasn’t spoken yet) pipes up. “We calls her Snapdragon.”  
“What?” Dain growls.

  
“Snapdragon.” The dark one, Gleli, speaks. “She bites.” he explains, cheeks reddening slightly under his beard.  
“I’ll bet she does and all.” Dain huffs. “What would ye have me do with these fools, cousin?”

  
Thorin hisses under his breath, surveying the five men who brought him back his treasure. Hanr in his captain’s rainment, old Toinar with his burnt face and brown hair chopped short for some long ago sin only his heart knows. Debur, well-oiled beard and hints of a smirk. Gleli son of Gali, wringing his hands at intervals and stroking the axe butt in his belt.

  
The fifth is a pale skinny youth Thorin knows not. “Your name, boy.” he asks, stopping in front of him.

  
“Rilin, my lord. Son of…son of Ria.” A motherson. Of course. Thorin nods sharply, seeing the mixture of shame and defiance in the boy’s eyes. He thinks of his child, with no father to claim her until this day. How she might have grown up not knowing him, not knowing who she was, but for these men.

  
“What was your part in this?” Thorin prompts.

  
“I…I was to keep the little one quiet, sir, when we took her from the smial. Prince Fili was already taken care of, begging your pardon, so I gave her milk and seeds to keep her sleeping. My _amad_ is an apothecary back home, so-”

  
“I see.” Thorin cuts him off. “By taken care of-”

  
“I thought it best that the Prince be left unharmed, the better to face your majesty’s judgement.” Hanr dips his head as he speaks over Rilin’s stuttering reply. “Under the circumstances, the best course of action seemed to…to silence him. Temporarily.”

  
“He means they knocked the boy out.” Toinar rumbles, seeming supremely unconcerned with any potential reaction, be it Hanr’s glaring, Gleli’s squeaks of protest and Dain’s foreboding rumble. “Are we going to get after Snapdragon, or not?” he asks, inclining a glance towards Thorin, who feels a sharp pinch at his heart.

  
His child. Billa’s child, stolen from her mother in the dead of night, running from her captors even now, from him and his because she knows not her heritage or her birth right…because she must think them fearsome creatures to have taken her from her home and those who love her. To Thorin, who knows what it is to be forced from ones home in terror, this seems bleak indeed.

  
Maker above, what were they _thinking_?

  
“Very well.” Thorin’s fists clench. He knows not what to think of Billa now, or what to think of _himself_ , but there is a child wandering his halls who is more important than that. He wants his daughter, safe in his arms, and then perhaps he can breathe without fear for her pressing at his throat.

  
“Call out the guard. I want her found, now.” He says. Hanr rushes to carry out his orders, the others following, and Dain looks to Thorin. He shakes his head imperceptibly- let the five imbeciles assist in finding his daughter, since they proved so proficient in that already. Then he will decide what to do with them, once his rage and fear is cooled somewhat.

  
 _He has a daughter._ It beggars belief- that she exists at all, that Billa would think to keep it a secret from him, that he could have been so blind and mad as not to recognise the signs, that any of this is happening, that it could happen. _Oh, Billa, my sweet sharp little love, what a fool I was to let you run from me._

  
And small surprise that she had, given his treatment of her. Dain pours him a flagon of ale and Thorin tips it back into his throat to calm the hooks and knives, barely tasting it if truth be told. His thoughts are consumed with all the places in the mountain a shire fauntling might go, all the dangers the unknown presents.

  
He remembers Fili and Kili, strong hardy boys into all sorts of mischief. Will she be like that, fruit of his seed, youngest of the line of Durin?

Child of a foolish king and a hobbit burglar. That’s what they’ll call me, he realises, the burn in his chest borne from anger and alcohol. Thorin the Fool, King Under the Mountain.

  
(and she had fallen, away from his grasp with her hands wrapped protectively around her midriff in a frightened, urgent gesture he only now understands, she had flinched beneath the anvil blow of Thorin’s words, words he cannot now believe he once uttered in rage and grief greater than he’d felt since Azanulzibar-)

  
He has much to atone for. He is not without his pride though. The child is his. The men did wrong, bringing her here like this but she is _his_. He gave Billa a child, filled her with it- and was not there to see her belly grow, to hold her as she birthed their babe. To love her, protect her. Protect them both.

  
He has been a fool. A well-meaning one, a kingly fool even, but a fool. Well, no more.

  
“I must join the search.” He says, hastening towards the door with Dain at his side. However, before he can exit the room and organise the guard to find the lost child (Snapdragon, what kind of a name is that, ought he to be offended or amused?), it opens from the other side and almost hits him in the face.

  
“What’s going on, Thorin?” Dwalin asks, Grasper in one hand, the other twitching towards Keeper and an extremely heavy scowl on his face. “I’ve got Hanr Half-clotted bossing my men about and spouting that it’s on your orders. Some rubbish about a dragon.”

  
Thorin gives a half chuckle of mingled annoyance and despair, claps his friend on the shoulder and explains, briefly, what Hanr and his men have done.

  
“Bastards.” Dwalin spits when the tale is done, summing up the situation in more succinct terms than Thorin could.  
“Well, that’d be Rilin only, and he’s a good enough lad. Gleli’s alright too, and I suppose Debur’s young enough to be stupid without meaning it. Would you have me chain them up, Thorin?” Dain asks, half in jest but with his brows lowered and voice dark. It is plain he does not want to, but he will if his cousin asks for it.

  
“Hanr, yes. Tomorrow, if she isn’t found by then. Put the striplings in the holding cells. Toinar…” Thorin is loath to imprison such a renowned warrior as the brown bearded dwarf, and doubts it would do much good but the fact remains that Toinar is old enough to know better. Older than Hanr, even if he was not the captain of the mission. But then again, what could he have done to prevent Hanr’s actions?

  
“I’ll send him home to face judgement there, if it’s too much for you to sort. He’s a good man, and the others just lads. It’s Hanr I’d want screaming from his guts, would that I were you.” Dain growls, and Dwalin grunts in agreement.

  
“Fine.” Thorin says distractedly. He wishes to punish those who took his child, but their intent was not to harm, it seems true. He will think on that later, when the girl is found.

  
“Can’t believe Fili let himself be caught unawares.” Dwalin shakes his head in rueful bewilderment. “It’s rule one, I always taught him, I said _laddie, don’t forget to guard your back_.”

  
Thorin almost smiles, but the thought of Fili and what exactly he was doing in Billa’s house, in Billa’s _bed_ , sets the curdling afresh in his stomach. “What?” Dwalin asks, his senses preternatural in the face of his king’s ire.

  
“My idiot guards seem to think Dis’ boy is making time with Thorin’s woman, that’s what.” Dain says contemptuously. Dwalin’s scoff is loud and equally contemptuous, and causes Thorin to lift his gaze from his own calloused hands.

  
“You don’t believe it?” Thorin asks gravely. He can scarce believe it himself, of _Fili_ , who almost seemed to look on her as something like a sister. It scarcely seems plausible.

  
Would Billa turn to his nephew for comfort? He cannot know, but though Hanr and his men are idiots, he has no cause to think them liars. Moreover, they have no cause to lie. And Billa has proven herself a liar several times over, however pure her intentions might have been.

  
He makes no claim to betterment over her, but one cannot ignore facts and truth, and she stole from him, lied through her teeth, much as he loves her and Mahal he does but Thorin King Under the Mountain cannot forget it even as he forgives by inches. He wishes he could, but now it emerges that she hid his child- he understands why, she most probably thought him indifferent…and had every right to choose a new lover, even his nephew. He renounced her, and to the ways of hobbits-

 

Dwalin jerks him out of his maudlin state by nudging his leg with a booted foot. “Of course I don’t believe it, it’s codswallop. I can’t speak for our burglar, but Fili- Mahal’s sake, Thorin, he’s the only dwarf under the mountain who still thinks the sun shines out of your royal arse. The lad wouldn’t even think of it.”

  
“Billa might.” Thorin points out, the truth of his friend’s words hitting him somewhere in the vicinity of his gut, and Dwalin shrugs.

  
“Might. She might have married some curly haired hobbit fellow. She might have taken up with dwarf or man or elf.” At that, Thorin growls, unable to help himself. 

  
“She must be a queer sort in any case, to keep your daughter from you.” Dain says, gruff and uncomfortable. He knows little of Billa, and Thorin has not been inclined to speak of her over the past few years.

  
It hurts. **Much**.

  
 _Too much._

  
There. He has admitted it.

  
“Aye. But hobbits are queer folk. Mayhaps she thought Thorin wouldn’t own the little one- what’s her name?” Dwalin turns his eyes on Thorin in question.

  
“Snapdragon, if Hanr and his lot can be believed. Though I doubt that’s her mother-name.” Dwalin laughs at that, but Thorin feels the hollowness returning. Whatever the truth is and it’s possible consequences, whether Billa loves him or no and the reason for her hiding away, he cannot think of himself when his daughter is running round Erebor, frightened and alone.

  
He will find her. He must.

  
“Right then.” Dwalin says grimly, when he sees the resolve set in Thorin’s eyes. “Let’s catch us a dragonling.”

  
“Um, sir, your highness?” A voice interrupts as they begin to ready themselves, Dain promising to marshall his own men to the search. A dwarf is peeking round the door to Dain’s chamber, but he is one of Dwalin’s underlings and it is Thorin he is addressing.

  
“What?” Thorin says eagerly, thinking to hear news of the child.

  
“There’s a load of them pointy eared folk from Mirkwood just arrived. Say they’ve a messenger with them and wish to speak to you at once.” The young guard tells him- Sirn, Thorin recalls, that is his name, recently arrived from Ered Luin.

  
“I’ve not got time to pander to Thranduil and his ridiculous demands, not now. Send them to Balin.” Thorin says brusquely. Really, who does the elven-king think he is, and at a time like _this_?

  
“I did milord, but…the messenger…he isn’t from Lord Thranduil.” The dwarf explains apologetically.

  
“Who is he from then, Sirn?” Dwalin asks in a long suffering tone, and Thorin suspects that coaxing information from this lad in inches is an oft-repeated task.

  
“From the West, sirs. From Elrond of Rivendell. And he say it’s urgent. Something about…about…” Sirn twitches a little, but at a brusque nod from Dwalin he gulps and comes out with it. “About a hobbit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My elf-love is showing, isn't it? You can blame the Silmarillion. All of it.  
> Thorin...he's trying. Can't expect him to let go of a four year long grudge just like that, but he's getting there.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are elves everywhere, and Thorin is not amused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is...not very well constructed, and there is now I think about it a reason why burglarising is a series that hops between events rather than a story with a linear narrative. And that reason is because I would be spectacularly crap at writing the latter. So one more chapter after this and then we're done with All That Is Gold.  
> Thankyou everyone for kudos and comments, and just for reading really. :)

Elf princes- why must they all converge at once? It is question Thorin Oakenshield would never have seen himself asking, yet now as king under the mountain he must suffer two in the space of as many months.

The dark haired elf who’d stood before him mere hours ago had claimed to be a messenger, but Thorin thought otherwise. He had been dressed as befits a warrior, a tall helm under his arm and sword hilt emerging from beneath his cloak. His eyes were hooded and guarded, and he walks as one with knives hidden in his boots.

After a few questions, it had been clear that this was no servant or vassal of Rivendell. Rather, Lord Elrond had sent one of his much renowned sons to deliver his paltry threats.

“You must understand, lord Thorin.” Elrohir of Rivendell said, in the liquid tones of the High Elves of the West. “Billa Baggins is very dear to us.”

“You lie.” He had accused the elf-prince, freshly arrived from Lorien and under the grudging escort of Thranduil’s red headed captain. “By what way is she anything to you? You know her not.”

The elf had smiled almost sadly in reply. “On the contrary. My brother Elladan and I got to know her quite well whilst she was at Rivendell during her confinement.” The words were far too measured to at all match the fire they have invoked in Thorin’s heart.

No. It is impossible, unbelievable. Almost as unthinkable as the idea of her and Fili, and yet, he now realises, infinitely more probable. She would not have gone to them. Never. She would have thought to protect their babe, perhaps, but never to the extent that she would hide away within the elf realm. She would not be so cruel. 

 _You are a king, act like one_. His father’s voice reprimands him. _None of this mooning over the hurts she may have done you_. There is more at work here.

That idea burns though, the notion of her in Rivendell, being dressed up and petted by those damned elves as their babe rested inside her. When the company had first come to Imladris nearly five years ago, she had been whisked away from them and returned dressed in elvish rainment, Lord Elrond himself tucking a wide green shawl about her shoulders with a small smile on his ageless face _. “Brought from the Golden Wood for my daughter when she was a child.”_ he had informed them.

Billa had smiled back, shy and thankful. Kili had grinned, Fili and Bofur had teased and Thorin had barely disguised his fuming at the incident- that the elves would treat their burglar as a doll for their amusement, dress her as one of their pets in pretty cast offs.

_When he could give her nothing._

And now, he realises that they had probably done more whilst Billa was confined there, and after the birth of his daughter.

Their child, the treasure they made, Thorin’s daughter, being born into the hands of the elves. Billa in Rivendell. His child in Rivendell. Separated from him in the hands of those that in a second could be mortal enemies, trapped within the confines of Lord Elrond’s prying _kindness_. He knows how deceptive such kindness can be…

***

_“When we retake Erebor I am going to have the biggest and the best library that middle earth has ever seen, and **neither of you are allowed in!”**   Thorin looked up from tending to Orcrist’s blade (elvish sword it may be but it is still a fine one, and deserves all the care and attention he can afford it) to see young Ori stomping across the threshold and over to his bedroll, where he curled up in his blankets as huffily as was possible, his back to both his brothers. _

_Dori and Nori proceeded to do the same, letting the door to the chamber swing shut behind them and conducting a whispered argument concerning elves, libraries and bad influences. From what Thorin could gather, they had found Ori holed up with one of Elrond’s servants trying to learn to read elvish. Thorin waited until the two had settled into their own bedrolls and then rose to check the corridor._

_On the way, he stepped over several of his companions, all of whom had bedded down for the night in the main room of the quarters they’d been carousing in when he and the halfling returned from the map reading. Separate bedrooms had been provided, but none of the dwarves were willing to lose sight of one another in this luminous elf city that still seemed ever so slightly sinister in its harmony._

_It was downright unsettling, really, Thorin mused as he discreetly checked the perimeters- to be sheltering under the roof of one such as Lord Elrond. The elf seemed a more decent sort than the pallid golden haired coward who called himself King of the Woodland Realm, but all elves were not to be trusted. They were never as they seemed._

_Thorin knew this better than most. He had seen it happen, felt the sting of betrayal, the lack of regard the elves could oh so suddenly discover for those they had previously called allies. Thranduil had drunk of his grandfather’s ale, broke bread with Thrain and paid homage to the heirs to the Mountain, pledged to come to the aid of the dwarves of Erebor in return for their friendship and alliance._

_It still rankles within Thorin, that slow tilt of the head as Thranduil turned his ludicrous animal away and left Thorin’s kin and people to burn and die. His **mother** , and countless more. Perhaps the elves would not have stood a chance against the dragon, but though Erebor was lost, their aid might have saved those whose ashes now lay beneath the gold that whispered madness in Thorin’s grandfather’s ears. _

_No. Thorin would not trust an elf, not even one such as Elrond Peredhil who is half a man, or so it was said.  Men were scarce more trustworthy by any account- yet another bitter lesson learned in exile. He would not risk any further death. The history of elves and dwarves was long and bloody, but Thorin knew naught that had ever come well of it._

_He closed the door quietly as he returned to the chamber, satisfied that his company were not being watched. They were too few warriors among them, and too many who should have been left behind to safety- who perhaps, in kinder times, would have been protected as they should have been._

_His nephews, young Ori and his gentle hearted oldest brother, damaged ones such as Bifur…and then there was the halfling. None of them should be here and yet they were. Miss Baggins least of all. She was soft as the rolling hills of her homeland, with her blushing features and small, self-deprecating smiles, that pipe she insisted on toting everywhere, odd for a woman, the way she fussed almost as much as Dori - spent the first leg of the journey complaining that she had forgotten her **bonnet** , for Mahal’s sake (what is a bonnet, for that matter?)- and her stubborn lack of a beard that might at least give Thorin some confidence of her- _Mahal fucking wept.

_So frustrated was he with thoughts of the hobbit that Thorin neglected to keep his eyes to the ground. His foot caught in a blanket, throwing him off balance, and Thorin Oakenshield, King (in Exile) Under the Lonely Mountain, dropped to one knee with a curse._

_He quickly checked around the room, making sure his humiliating stumble hadn’t woken any of the company. No, they all seemed sound asleep, even the brothers Ri who were inclined to bicker well into the night when the mood struck them. Thorin brought his other leg down to right himself and sat up on his knees in order to return the blanket to its proper place._

_And_ oh _, would that he had tripped and woken the entire group to be spared the shameful rush of heat the sight in front of him afforded him._

_The halfling had set up her bedroll a few feet away from Bofur and his kin as she was prone to, and she lay there on her back with her head tucked into her shoulder. Her shift was rucked up to her thighs and her legs tangled in the blanket he had dislodged, but the amount of creamy, freckled skin on display was enough for Thorin’s throat to turn dry._

_He had of course noted that the halfling might be considered desirable - her hair the colour of rich copper, the dimples in her face when she smiled, those dark eyes whose colour he could never quite pin- yet more factors in her status as an utter liability. But looking down at her now he was struck by a want so palpable he wondered how he could not have noticed it before._

_Shame arrived as quickly as lust when he realised that no, a king on a quest to reclaim his homeland should not be running his eyes over a slumbering halfling whose plump lips were slackened by sleep, whose hips made beguiling curves beneath the stark white of her petticoat and whose waist he wanted suddenly to grip and pull her to him._

_It was not honourable, worse, it was **unkingly** and yet…he could not look away. The burglar was right there, so small and so soft, the tops of her breasts spilling from their starched confines, and Thorin was struck anew by the roundness of her chest- dwarrow women tend not to show so much growth there unless they were nursing and no, _ no- _he would not think of how if she only shifted a few inches he might see more._

_He did not want to see more. He could not want her- or **want** to want her, come to that. Not a bit of it. Doing so would be a worse liability than bringing her along had been in the first place. He would not let himself be dragged into some kind of ridiculous attraction to the hobbit woman . _

_Not when they were on the journey of their lives, when so much was at stake and it was his duty to keep a clear head and his eyes forward, not fixed as they might have been lately on the beguiling behind of a certain halfling, on the hitch in her walk when she first climbed down from her pony, on her blushing cheeks and shapely legs._

_The halfling stirred in her sleep, obviously feeling the cold, and Thorin forced himself to cover her back up, feeling the sick thrill of desire curdling with anger and shame in his gut as he turned away, back to his sword and his own (cold, empty) bedroll._

_She was a_ shireling _, Aule help him, and would return to her safe, comfortable home- assuming she didn’t die in the next months, and that thought was suddenly unbearable. He could not let her be harmed, she was his to protect no matter what he had told the wizard, she was a member of his company._

_That was all she was though, Thorin told himself firmly as he picked up the whetstone and took once again to sharpening his sword. She would no more look at him than she would at man or elf._

_No matter how many fancy spangled shawls Lord Elrond cared to give her._

 

***

Elrohir had gone mere hours after he came, departing for Dale once it was clear no truce could be reached. “I came not to incite anger between yourself and the elves of the West, master dwarf.” he had said frankly before he left. “Simply to warn you- Billa Baggins and her daughter are under my father’s protection. An injury to her is one to us all.”

“I would never have harmed her!” Thorin had sworn, hearing the futile remnants of acts he can neither own to nor take back hiding behind his words.

 Mahal, though, what would he have done? He would have kept her. Safe. Protected, even in his anger, he would have given anything to have her by his side.

Funny, how he can admit that to himself now when she seems further away than ever.

In spite of the King Under the Mountain’s protestations, the elf had stood his ground in the face of Thorin’s scowl, the bristling of Dain’s beard and the slow grate of Grasper and Keeper sliding together from where Dwalin stood by the door.

“Once my father realised that Billa’s child had been taken, he sent word to my brother and I. We were visiting our sister in the Golden Wood. I came with all haste and now I hear that you have _lost_ her.” Elrohir interrupts again. “Do you by chance have Billa’s diary?”

“That book, you mean? Aye, it was in the bag Hanr brought. Evidence of her treachery, he said, not that I read any of it. Never did do so well with common writing.” Dain had shrugged, giving Thorin a slight nod that meant _later_ as he spoke. “What of it?”

A diary. Billa had a diary. Well, yes of course she did, Billa Baggins of Bag end, his beautiful methodical nonsensical little scholar of a hobbit. Suddenly, though, the yearning for her words is kindled in him, harsh and powerful.

“I suggest you read it, Lord Thorin, and read it well. Then you may know.” Elrohir had started towards the door of the receiving chamber and Thorin noted with distaste that he had trodden leaf mulch into the carpet that had been Thrain’s bride gift to Thorin’s mother, for Aule’s sake.

Before departing, the elf had turned one last time, his eyes very dark, grave as a prince of old. “I see now you knew nothing of the little one until she was brought here. So what of those who stole her? What will be done with them?”

“That is none of your concern. Rest assured that I do not take anything concerning my daughter and my burglar lightly.” Thorin scowls a little, remembering what he said. He had always called Billa _burglar_ \- that or halfling, hobbit, little thing, givashel- words of love in a usual fashion did not come easily to the king under the mountain, so he endeavoured to show her in what ways he could just how special she was to him.

Besides, she has proved herself a proficient burglar in all aspects, and he can no longer decide whether to be angry with her about it.

 _“Her name.”_ He had lowered himself to beg a last boon from the elf who seems now a ghost in the night, another ingredient to the confusion that Thorin’s life has become. _“Tell me…tell me the child’s name.”_

He could have sworn he saw the elves pointed ears twitch. _“Freya. I believe her mother named her Freya.”_   And then he was gone with a swish of fabric and a whisper of hidden knowledge Thorin wanted to mine to the quick but could not for the sake of pride, damn him.

Mahal have mercy, Billa Baggins is trying to slay him even from a thousand leagues away. A dwarvish name for their daughter, then? What can she have meant by it- to torture herself?

To remember him, mayhaps- remember what they had. He knows well that she did not do it to make things easier on herself in her provincial homeland, where she must have suffered, is still suffering all manner of snide insults. The thought simply adds to the burn, and his need to make things right grows greater.

Or had she wanted to imagine, perhaps, what they might have had, had he not been such a fool. He thinks for one moment what it might have been like for her, alone and afraid, but strong, she was always so strong…he owes her better than what has passed, it is true.

And he must find their child for a start. There is nothing waylaying him, but as word spreads throughout the mountain that the King has sired a child on a halfling (Thorin takes a moment to thank the Maker that the envoy from the eastern mountains has been delayed- Ironfists are not the most amenable to such things, it is true)- well, he knows the kind of unsavoury rumours that will be like to spread.

It matters not. He will have his daughter returned to him, and hold her upon the throne if he must, to show his people his true heart. She will suffer no scorn, and those who attempt insult against her or her mother will pay for it. As Hanr and his bandits must pay, Thorin supposes.

He should join the search, as he had meant to when the elf arrived, but the weight on his lap, that of a small lace bound book, stops him from rising. _Read it well, Thorin Oakenshield_. Says the whisper in his ear. Dare he look? Does he wish to know her heart as is recorded on these gossamer pages?

Instead, or perhaps to put off the decision, he looks up. Dawn again, just reaching this time and cold- it is almost winter. His daughter hides within the mountain, and Thorin sends a quick prayer to the maker for her safety before rising. He thinks to find Balin, seek the counsel of one wiser than he in the ways of hobbits.

His progress to the door though is stopped by the sound of a voice he has not heard in weeks.

“And that’s mine and Fee’s room, over there, and here- yeh, okay love, hang on- here is where you can sleep, and where your amad- yes, that’s mama, good girl- will stay when she gets here. It was s’posed to be my room, but it was too big so I moved in with Fee-

Alright then, _Fifi_. Can’t let my brother live that down, can we sweetie?” Kili’s easy prattle continues as Thorin practically body checks himself through the door, heart in his throat. He makes his way rapidly along the corridor to where his nephews sleep, breathing rapid and fists clenched in his furs.

When he turns the corner though, he is surprised to see Dori and Ori hurrying towards him from the opposite direction, worried looks on both their faces and beards in disarray. “Ah, my King.” Dori says, in that incredibly polite tone that means he is inches close to losing his mind. Thorin can appreciate the sentiment, but then it occurs to him to be suspicious.

“Dori, Ori.” He attempts a smile but from the look on Ori’s face it seems not to have come off so well. “Is anything amiss?”

“That remains to be seen, but we must have words- drat that boy, he probably thought you’d be out searching- wait,  Thorin!” Dori attempts to place himself between the King and the half open door to Kili’s former quarters, Ori makes a horrified squeaking noise and Thorin realises with a jolt that they are well aware of what his nephew hides within.

He is too relieved though, to be overly angry.

For there in the centre of the room stood his nephew, beard thicker than usual from his months spent in the deep mines without access to the razor he usually used to trim it for archery (the thought of this makes Thorin a mixture of proud and rueful). Kili’s dark brows are raised at the commotion, and his lip quirks when he sees his Uncle.

And in his arms is clutched the smallest girl child Thorin has ever seen- tiny, really, but with a strong dwarvish nose and the bluest eyes, not sapphire but late sky, her face reddened and crumpled into dimples that make her the very spit of her mother. Thorin lets a small exclamation in khuzdul slip from his lips, and the child lays her head on one side.

“Oh.” Kili says, as Ori plants his face in his hands with a  groan and Dori starts tutting frantically. “Thought you might have been out searching,  uncle. Didn’t you lose something?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Kili. Adorable concussed duckling cannot keep still for long, after all.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dwobbits, elves and punching. Mostly deserved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this got long as a way for me to make up for the delay in posting. I was really supposed to be studying today, but then Thorin showed up and wanted to angst and be obtuse about things, so here we go. Thanks and much love to readers.

The silence in the disused chamber is reminiscent of a funeral hall, but Thorin pays no mind to that, nor to Dori’s irate hand flapping or the threatening tilt of his nephew’s eyebrows. All his attention is given to the tiny fauntling in Kili’s arms, and her round eyes stare back at him with equal astonishment.

“Kili…you-” The King Under the Mountain can scarce force out the words, such is the constriction in his throat.

“What?” Kili asks, that pseudo-jovial air replaced with an edge of sharp mockery. “What, Uncle? What could you _possibly_ have to say?”

“Kili, do not-” Thorin begins, blinking hard and trying not to see Vili glaring at him the night before Thorin, Thrain, Thror and the other warriors left for Moria, asking _how he could possibly do this to Dis and what, was Vili supposed let them go and get themselves killed for what exactly?_ The image is disconcerting, for it is Fili that throws to the boys' father, but Kili’s tone of voice right now thrusts Thorin into the past like nothing else.

And it does not help. Not in the slightest.

“Go ahead.” Kili continues, brash and scoffing. “I’m listening. Freya is too- how’s about you try and explain to _your daughter_ why she is here rather than at home with her mother. Or better yet, why her mother _isn’t here with us?”_

Thorin’s daughter looks bemusedly from her cousin the other dwarrows in the room as Kili hisses his recriminations. Thorin feels rocks settling in his chest and throat in place of the hooks of earlier, and he struggles to control the rage and frustration that has sprung up again.

“Kili.” Thorin steps forward, intending to lay a hand on his nephews shoulder but thinking better of it when Kili jerks backwards, unsteady on his hurt leg, and when Freya buries her face in Kili’s jerkin, obviously afraid. “Give me the child.” he orders, voice very low. He will not ask, he is king under the mountain and the girl is of his line, his blood and his seed, he will not, _cannot_ beg simply to hold her.

“Why?” Kili asks, suddenly confused and a boy again. Thorin grits his teeth- does his nephew think him indifferent, callous even towards his and Billa’s child?

He clearly has much to set straight, and most of it of his own doing.

“Because I am her father and you are upset and about to fall over.” Thorin says simply, reaching out to steady his nephew. Kili jerks back again and nearly does fall, knocking against the table and cursing in Khuzdul.

This, it appears, is enough for Dori to overcome his conniption fit and bustle over, snap “Young ears are flapping!” and manoeuvre the small girl-child from Kili’s grip.

“As if she understands.” Kili grumbles as Thorin eases him into a chair. His face is ashen and it seems days in the deep mines without any rest on his mangled limb have taken their toll. Kili gives his hurt leg a disgusted glance. “Bloody useless…would’ve been better if they cut it off.”

“Never say that.” Thorin growls. “You are not useless, and I…regret how things have gone between us. Would that I could make amends.” The silence is back, and he senses that both the brothers Ri are staring at him in something like awe from behind his back.

“Was that an apology, Uncle?” Kili quips, his brown eyes twinkling in a disconcerting mixture of japing and Frerin-ish sincerity disguised as flippancy. Thorin sighs heavily and backs away so he can look his nephew in the eye.

“Don’t push your luck, boy.” he warns.  “I may have…mishandled some of this, but I’m still your uncle and your king.”

“And I’m Freya’s cousin and Fili’s brother and Billa is my _friend_ and they’ve all been hurt and it seems like I’m the only one who gives a damn.” Now there is challenge, and no mistake. And what, exactly can he say to answer it?

Thorin feels exhausted down to his bones all of sudden, wondering just how much of the hurt that has gone and is still to come could have been avoided but for his own selfish whims. Well, he is not _solely_ to blame, but even so…

“Dori.” He appeals to the silver haired Ri son, holding out his hands for his daughter. Dori fusses and tuts a while, but gives Freya a gentle pat on the head and hands her over to her father.

The child, his own flesh and blood, is still and stiff when Thorin holds her at eye level, gripping securely under her arms. Her face remains slightly crumpled in a temper, and there is a definite pout on her lips.

“Do you know me, little one?” Thorin asks, praying that she will show him some recognition, that Billa could not have left her wholly ignorant of her sire and heritage. It _could not_ be so.

It is. Freya- Mahal be blessed she is barely the length of Thorin’s arm and _perfect_ in every way, her black curls falling in a mess and her nose and chin strong, like Dis, like his mother- slowly shakes her head. “Nah-uh.” she supplements, and Thorin has to supress the urge to gather her to his chest and never let her go, no matter how unkingly that might appear.

And then she does something that will forever cement Thorin Oakenshield as the biggest and most sentimental fool ever to reside under Erebor, King or no. She reaches out with her little fingers, eyes bright, takes hold of Thorin’s beard, and _pulls_.

“Oh, now.” Dori says, dabbing at his suddenly watery eyes as Ori and Kili stare goggle eyed at Freya, who is holding a fistful of Thorin’s dark facial hair and looking around in confusion, unaware perhaps that she has just performed the most instinctual act a dwarfling can- reaching for their father’s beard when first being held by them.

A little late, perhaps, but it makes no matter. “You shall know me now, my treasure.” he assures the little girl, the endearment slipping as easily off his lips as if he has been saying it these three or four years past _. As he should have been_ , reminds the dark bitter part of his soul where blame is wrapped up.

“Why?” Freya asks pointedly, and it strikes Thorin suddenly, that though her eyes are his they contain a will as old as Durin’s line, and as strong as her mother’s. Please Aule that it will serve her well is his strongest hope.

“Because I am your father- your _Adad_.” He says, bringing Freya close and pressing his forehead gently against hers. The customary blessing will have to wait until the morn, prayers given to the maker for her health and safety and prosperity, but this at least he can give her, a gesture of acceptance, acknowledgement- of love.

Though she looks enthralled by his actions, his words give the little one pause, for her lips tremble slightly. “Na-uh.” she protests again, coughing a little in the thick air of the disused chamber. “Don’t have a da.”

To have her state it baldly like that, as if she is telling him solemnly that the mountain is made of stone, the sky is blue, one gets wet when it rains and Dwalin is going to sneak into Ori’s quarters tonight- it sends a hollow sting through him.

“Merry does. His da’s Unca Saradoc, but Missus Lobelia says I got no da cuz mama was imp-impr- cuz mama ran away and...” Freya huffs in confusion, and Thorin is torn between the urge to frown at the thought of malicious gossip against his woman and their child and the bizaare impulse to smile at Freya’s attempts to rationalise it in her three or four year old mind.

“Who said what about Billa?” Kili asks dangerously, attempting to get up. Thorin realises that the dust in this room is doing neither Freya’s lungs, Dori’s hair or his nephew’s state of temper any good and suggests they relocate to his own chambers where the search for Freya can be called off.

He watches Kili carefully as the boy gets up, both to make sure his leg is not troubling him too much and to note how he keeps Freya in his line of sight at all times. _You do not trust me, nephew, and I am not sure I trust myself, but what else are we to do?_   Thorin wonders.

Of course, Mahal likes to make Thorin’s days just that little bit extra challenging when really he already has enough on his plate what with elves and wayward nephews and daughters and whatnot, and he immediately runs into a worried looking Dwalin as when they reach the door to the kings chambers.

“Oh, thank the maker, you found her.” Dwalin all but groans in relief as he follows Thorin and the other three dwarrows into the room.

“Of a fashion, though I think Dori and Ori are the ones who deserve the credit.” Thorin says- he is too relieved at having his daughter in his arms to be upset at their apparent deception, but an explanation would be nice, he decides as he sits down and attempts to settle Freya onto his lap.

She appears to find Dwalin fascinating though and does not cease squirming until he steps into her line of vision once again. “Oh really?” Thorin’s head guardsman asks, eyeing Ori warmly. Dori makes a dissatisfied noise and crosses his arms.

“She was hiding in the library, apparently, in a right state. How did she even escape from- well, for that matter, who did bring her here?” Dori asks, looking properly perplexed by these goings on.

“Dain’s captain, Hanr.” Thorin says, and though Dori nods sagely, Freya reacts to the name by taking a flying leap off of Thorin’s lap and running to hide behind Kili and Ori’s legs, from where she has to be coaxed out slowly by Dori’s assurances that Hanr is not coming back and the promise of the return of a _mister teddy-bear._

Thorin shares a look with Dwalin, who affirms his wordless request. “I put the lads in the lock up and Hanr down in the hole. See if that’ll shut him up fer a while.”

“Good.” Thorin replies- it is not good, not at all, the five are loyal dwarrows who thought they were doing right, but that must be weighed against the snatching of a child, not to mention the trauma caused to Freya and to her mother. What must Billa be doing, he thinks suddenly, scarcely able to breathe from his longing for her.

“Uncle Thorin?” Kili asks, distangling himself haphazardly from Freya. “What’s going to happen now?”

Thorin opens his mouth to respond, then closes it again. What _are_ they to do now? Answers do not come easy, but there is one thing that stands out.

“You will stay here with Dain and Balin, look after Freya whilst Dwalin and I go to the Shire to fetch your brother back here, and Billa as well. We’ll bring them home.” This plan is sudden in its formulation, but Thorin likes to think it sounds reasonably plausible.

Kili makes a face, whether at the thought of being technically in charge of Erebor or just general distaste at Thorin’s ideas the King cannot properly tell. Ori is allowing Freya to poke her fingers through his hair (and was that courtship braid there last week?), but Thorin’s attention is caught by Dori, who is looking at him as though he is a dwarfling up to his elbows in soot.

“What?” he asks, for King though he may be, Dori of Ri and his steely grey glare are not to be trifled with if one knows what is good for them. 

“You as well.” Dori says in a despairing tone of voice. “I must ask, highness, are the entire line of Durin completely unaccustomed to what it means to raise a child?”

“If you are questioning my abilities with regards to Freya-” Thorin begins hotly, for Mahal knows Dori does like to get his beard in a knot over things…

“I’m not questioning anything, except this- do you really think Billa Baggins is still in the Shire? Really?” Dori asks lightly.

“Where else would she be?” Dwalin asks, as Thorin’s mind goes straight to the elves of the hidden valley and their welcoming arms the last time Billa found herself in need. Perhaps she is there even now, and-

“On her way here of course. To find her daughter.” Dori says simply.

Dwalin snorts, and Thorin thinks vaguely that this must be the first civil conversation his head guardsman and Dori have had in months. “She wouldn’t dare. Nor be so foolhardy.” Dwalin shakes his head at the thought.

“She would.” Dori bristles. “She is a parent- a mother- and that little girl is all she has.” The silence that meets that statement- seemingly wrung as it is from somewhere painful deep in Dori’s chest- is somehow worse than any earlier quiet of this unlikely evening. “And I suppose…she thinks that she is all Freya has.”  he adds, eyes flickering uncomfortably around the room.

“So we need only wait, then?” Kili sounds half excited, half terrified.

“Mama?” Freya perks up from her perch in Ori’s arms, and Thorin’s heart decides it would like to take a short holiday to the heretofore unknown region of his throat. Freya’s hopeful chirruping leaves everyone in the room feeling flaccid and useless, for they had and do love Billa Baggins in their own ways, and Thorin suspects that, when and if she does get here, the halfling is going to be buried under a pile of ten or so dwarves before he can even get to her.

 _Oh by Mahal’s hammer, please let her be coming._ He does not know if he can stand another day without her- wait, no, that is not correct. For he has stood years without her, has been perfectly satisfied with his Kingdom and his throne and his jewels-

“Where is he!? I’M GONNA KILL HIM!” Thorin’s uncomfortable brooding is interrupted by the sound of a guard’s head (probably young Sirn) hitting the floor as a familiar voice penetrates the thick stone walls of the royal chamber. Freya covers her protruding ears (round and dwarvish, Thorin notes with a flicker of pride) with her small hands as it is brought home to the dwarrows in the room that Dain Ironfoot is not the only dwarf whose bellow can rouse the entire mountain.

Quite effectively as well, as Bofur, Head Warden of the Eastern Mines, former resident of Ered Luin and erstwhile member of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield, bursts through the door clad in soot stained clothes and punches Thorin Oakenshield across the face.

Or attempts to, rather- his cousin is on his heels and Bifur manages to grab Bofur by the arms and deflect the blow so that it only glances Thorin’s jaw. Bofur’s hands are twisted from years of backbreaking work, but he still lands a powerful blow despite that and his forced restraints, and Thorin staggers backwards.

Dwalin goes to heft his axes, but stops, seemingly as surprised as the rest of them that gentle, personable Bofur has just attacked the King Under the Mountain. Even more surprising is his immediate lapse into calm, his habitual smile back on his face.

“You.” He says to Thorin. “Are a fucking idiot. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Billa shaves your head in your sleep.” That is all, it seems. Bofur grins sheepishly at the company, obviously aware of their shock and awe at his behaviour.

Bifur reprimands his cousin quickly in Iglishmek gestures, and Bofur shrugs, reaching up to right his hat. “Someone had to say it. So is this her then- oh no…”

Thorin turns to look in the direction that has stilled Bofur’s ever chattering tongue and realises what the unsettling background noise is. Apparently, the exhaustion and the fright and the confusion happening around her has finally caught up with Freya, and as the dwarves of the company look on helplessly, Thorin Oakenshield’s daughter succumbs, at last, to furious and inconsolable tears.

***

“You ought to go to bed.” Thorin tells his nephew some hours later. Kili gives a small, noncommittal grunt, but his drooping eyes stand at odds with his refusal.

On his lap, a red eyed and hastily fur wrapped Freya has finally succumbed to sleep. When her crying first started, Thorin had ordered the dwarrows of the company to vacate the room in hopes that less noise and fuss would calm her down.

They had done so with minimal resistance- Bofur had given him a look that pitched between furious and apologetic for his loss of control- and an aside explanation that sometimes even Kings needed a punch at times.

Dwalin had given him a knock on the shoulder and slipped from the room, attempting to slide his arm around Ori only to be politely elbowed out of the way by an irate Dori, resulting in an argument that carried down the corridor. And, most probably, would continue for the rest of the week.

Kili had stayed though. Quieting Freya had been a joint effort between uncle and nephew, and after trying several different methods- singing, walking her up and down, attempting to feed her- Thorin had eventually realised that his daughter’s hurt could not be soothed by those she did not know and most probably feared.

A chest in the corner of the King’s chamber is kept locked at all times, for it contains precious things he would rather forget. It was to this chest that Thorin went after his daughter subsided into heart-breaking grizzling into Kili’s chest, unlocking it with the key around his neck and sifting through the contents.

A small sword, elf made- more of a letter opener, really. A wooden comb, a pipe and a leather satchel- and a coat, small and tattered, a deep shade of maroon that is not quite red. “Here.” He had said, balling up the travel stained material (he would not let them wash it, for it still smelt of her, like lilacs and warm skin and pipe weed) and giving it to Kili.

“You kept this.” His nephew said tonelessly, but it did the trick nonetheless, and Freya eventually fell into a fitful sleep wrapped in her mother’s coat and a fur from the hearthside, her eyes red and her head tucked into the crook of Kili’s neck.

And now, Thorin sits in the same chair he always does when there is nothing else for it, and opens a small book, a book which is covered in pale grey fabric of gossamer thinness, wrong and foreign beneath his fingertips, and bound up with threads of thick white lace. The pages are thick, with notes and scribbles and flowers pressed between the paper leaves.

This book is not meant for the hands of one such as him, rock and stone king, but here it is.

_ I feel I must be a terrible imposition on Lord Elrond and his family, for they are being unbearably nice to me. Bringing me Elevenses, even, and I cannot stop crying so they must think me dreadfully ungrateful.  _

Thorin has opened the book several pages in, and the rest of this entry is blotched, as though tears had fallen on the paper, smearing the ink and the dear spidery hand it is written in. He breathes in hard and flicks the page a few times.

_ All I do these days is write, it seems. There’s a bench in the gardens I come to sit where it’s peaceful, reminds me of Bag-end. Only not really, because Rivendell is graceful and beautiful and so impossibly large, but I feel…I feel as though we are safe here, at least for a time.  _

_ And oh, I can feel her sometimes as well, pressing away inside me. She twists and turns like nobody’s business, and is fain to give me a moments rest.  ~~She is going to be just like her fa~~ _

_ But I must not think of that. It is folly beyond all count.  _

Thorin has to sit back for a moment, because it is as though she is speaking to him. Is that why she wrote this, then, to address her rough foolish lover who had cast her away, who must have seemed to her cruel above measure.

And he had been.

_ I dream of him. Only in my dreams he is dead, and I do not know if this frightens me or not. He is…so precious, they all are, the very best of dwarves, of all creatures, even if loving them has ruined me.  _

_ One would think it is hard to be sad here, but I am giving the most maudlin of widows a run for their money. I had wanted to forget.  _

_ Forgetting is both impossible and hurts much more than having already forgotten would.  _

_ Have you forgotten me, my King under the Lonely Mountain?  _

_ Mayhaps I am not worth the forgetting.  _

Never, never must she think that, and it cuts Thorin deeper than he can articulate to see her pain written so plainly for any and all to see.

He feels almost wrong in his reading, intruding on her mind and heart- books, things he has always considered more practical than anything, are special to his sweet Billa in a way he does not and cannot comprehend. Of course she would choose to give her secrets to one of them.

So he covets it, pores over her words and commits the strokes of her pen to memory as their daughter sleeps safe beside him, and stores up the scraps of her leftover affection in his heart. He will keep her, if only she does not fade out of recognition.

_ Lord Elrond cannot know what to make of me- I wept all over him today because Elladan (that’s his son, who has a twin, Elrohir, and they hunt orcs and ~~remind me of Fili and Kili only more serious and…elves~~ ) picked me up and put his hand on my belly, wanting to feel her kicking… _

_ I just started sobbing everywhere, not even because of what he did but because before only I’ve felt her. She was mine, and safe inside me.  _

_ And if anyone else should be feeling her it’s Thorin. I don’t mind saying it even though it’s pathetic- he has wrecked me and I cannot bring myself to care. Perhaps because it forced me to realise that Thorin was her father and I could never really and truly renounce him- and never have him again at the same time.  _

_ It wasn’t Elladan’s fault that I couldn’t bear it, only he was frightfully apologetic and when I couldn’t stop crying his father arrived and sort of…hugged me. Well, not a hug like we hug at home, or how my boys hug, but more stately and elf like- putting his arm around my shoulder and patting it a little.  _

_ I shouldn’t write this down, but I think he might know what it’s like to feel the stretch of so many miles between you and one you love, to know they are safer and happier and better being where they are. Without you.  _

_ So you must wait behind and try to bear it.  _

Thorin tosses the book to the table again, not knowing whether to feel disgust at himself or at the elves. Thinking of them pawing over her makes him want to destroy something, but the fact that they comforted her when he could not is worse.

She is his. Was and is and always has been his, quick sharp little burglar with her freckles and dimples, and he is a King and when he had her she was pliant and supple in his arms, trusting him so completely, it had been such a long time since anyone had done that, and he had been so blessed that she would even look his way.

She has drawn too amongst the pages- flowers, small garments, patches of simple colour and faces- a woman, inscribed _the lady arwen is said to be the most beautiful creature ever to grace middle earth. she leaves tomorrow for the Golden Wood and was gracious enough to let me draw her so the little one can see when it is born, only I feel I’ve done her no justice at all. _

Elves. Thinking themselves superior. Thorin is sure Thranduil would call his prancing blonde son the _most beautiful creature ever to walk Middle-earth as well._ Perhaps he and Lord Elrond could have a contest over whose child was prettiest and stop snatching other people’s burglars while they were at it.

Impatient and feeling sour and rash to the core for his frivolous thoughts, Thorin flicks to the end of the book.

_ I did not expect to bear for so long as I did, so you must forgive me  if I do not write more here, since I have so little space to fill up. Elrohir jokes that we should give this back to master Erestor, so that he can record it in Elvish ‘for posterity’, but I can’t imagine what about my shame and disgrace and moping is in any way momentous in history.  _

_ Little hobbits do not belong in the affairs of Big Folk, not even dwarves. My Freya, my little girl, she is all Durin in her looks, but small enough I think. She will be quite safe in the Shire. I have tarried here too much I fear, and feel a kind of longing to see Buckland and Tuckborough, the mill and the Green Dragon, oh and the Hill. Even the Brandywine would be a welcome view.  _

** it is easier to own to that than to say I wish for mountains and forests, for silly bejewelled dwarves who never stop and think about that which they do **

_ It makes no matter, either way, for it is time for me to go home. Perhaps I’ll just have to work out where that is on the way. Such is true enough of the last journey I went on.  _

_ Whether I can truly return or not, it will, I suppose, be rather nice to know.  _

Had she, then? She has made no attempt to return to him, yet now she comes.

Thorin closes the Mahal damned book and takes a look at the sleeping children on the floor. Kili grips his cousin gently, and much as Thorin wishes to hold his child, his treasure, he would not disturb them for the world.

 _Hurry then, my love._ For Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain, knows at last where his heart is. It is with the woman he so ignobly turned away, with the child she carried and birthed in her exile, their precious daughter, and  Billa Baggins will be shown all that is due to her.

There is much to prepare, and half formed plans swim into his mind. He will write his sister, bid her return so she can meet the mother of his child. This is still a grim business, but perhaps there is some joy to be found.

Yes. Perhaps. He knows his love better now, in spite of their aching distance. Her soul is bound up in the Shire perhaps, in green hills and flowery downs, birdsong and blustered skies. But her heart…he can hope, he must believe, her heart still belongs to him.

He will do everything he can to show her the depths of his regret, but he will not break from his need for her. A crown of flowers he will make, in the fashion of the shire, but in red and emerald jewels, set in gold burnished bright as her silken locks, and she will know herself for the treasure she is and the one she has given him.

Precious beyond all measure. Cherished. Adored. _Loved_.

This time, Thorin tells himself, thinking of the chest and its contents, the treasure beneath the mountain and the Arkenstone set above his throne, this time, he will do things right. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So help me I will work the entire company into this story by hook or by crook. Anyway, Bofur wanted to punch some friendly sense into Thorin. Has it worked?

**Author's Note:**

> A+ observation skills, boys. Really. Great work.  
> It pains me to write about Thorin and Kili not getting on, since I kind of feel like I broke my babies, and for all Thorin's faults I do think he is a really good uncle. A bit of a prat, but you can't have everything.  
> Also I found out that Dain is being played by Billy Connolly in the films. Do with than information (and my portrayal of him) what you will.


End file.
